We are all Marty McFLy. Yup, we’re masters of time distortion.
Recently I had a morning-long battle with myself to go for a walk. I was editing and writing and as each ‘pomodoro’ 25 minutes went by I said to myself:
“I’ll walk on the next break”
And of course I never did. I had distorted the time in my head. You can usually catch it in the language:
“That’ll take forever” I thought. Of course I don’t really mean that but the imprecision in my language is what helps me to distort it.
After a few hours my brain began bulging and fuzzing and I knew the walk was no longer a nice to have- it was needed.
So up I get and out I go- air pods in and happily strolling along the road to my favourite power pole. I check no one is looking, then turn around to head back (why do I always find it so embarrassing to do a 180 in public?)
I get back to my desk feeling refreshed and thinking why didn’t I do that hours ago?!
Here’s the crazy part- the from desktop, around pole, to desktop took me nine minutes.
NINE MINUTES!!
In that time it felt like I had visited another dimension, I saw my power pole for goodness sake! It felt like an eternity (there I go again) and the time away completely reset my brain’s ability to keep logging deep work hour.
But it only took me nine minutes.
Note to self, stop arguing with yourself- just go on the walk.
It’s always a good idea.
